George Garcia

Overview

George Garcia has demonized Israel and defended disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita.

Garcia has supported the Boycott, Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement as a
signatory to a list of individuals endorsing the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).

Garcia is a professor and chair of Medicinal Chemistry and the director of the Interdepartmental Program in Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Michigan (UMich).

Demonizing Israel 

Garcia wrote a letter to the editor of the Michigan Daily, published on June 1, 2010, in which he argued that “It is unconscionable that our tax dollars are supporting Israel’s oppressive occupation and inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people.”

Garcia went on to write that “the truth will come out regardless. Israel must be held accountable for its actions and must be forced to end its occupation and join the international community by respecting international law.” 

Garcia’s article was in response to news of the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident. 

The Mavi Marmara was the lead ship in the “Freedom Flotilla” that attempted to sail to Gaza in May 2010. Activists aboard the ship agitated for violent confrontation and chanted a slogan glorifying the killing of Jews. When Israeli security forces boarded the Marmara, protesters attacked them with iron bars, metal chairs, knives, stun grenades and firearms, rocks and bottles. A United Nations report found that the flotilla agitators initiated an organized, violent confrontation with Israeli forces, and that the Marmara was carrying no humanitarian aid, only weaponry.

Garcia signed a petition published on August 21, 2014, by the BDS movement titled:“A Call to People of Conscience Not to Speak at the University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Until Chancellor Wise Honor [sic.] the Contract to Hire Professor Steven Salaita.”

Signatories of the petition wrote: “Just as we work tirelessly to oppose Israeli ethnic cleansing and displacement of Palestinians taking place in our name, we will ensure that the silencing of Professor Salaita and others like him does not take place in our name either.”

In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.

Social Media and Weblinks

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-garcia-7792985b/